After an Easy Hearing, the NSA and FBI Are Ready for a Drink

By Philip Bump

June 18, 2013

If you were wondering how the National Security Agency and FBI felt about the very friendly hearing the House Intelligence Committee invited them to Tuesday, a hot mic has your answer. "Tell your boss," NSA Director Keith Alexander told the FBI deputy director, "I owe him another friggin' beer."

Throughout the hearing the two worked together, with Alexander frequently setting up topics upon which Joyce expounded. When Alexander said that the government's surveillance tools had stopped over 50 terror attacks, Joyce described four of them. And so on. Over the course of three hours, the two faced little in the way of critique.